by Emile Zola
‘My flute? Of course I have,’ he replied.
His red hair and whiskers seemed more bristly than usual as he looked on, quite absorbed, at the girls’ manoeuvres around their uncle. Himself a clerk in an insurance office, he used to meet Bachelard directly after office hours and never left him, following him round all the usual cafés and brothels. Behind the huge, ungainly figure of the one, you were sure to see the small, pale features of the other.
‘That’s it; keep at it!’ he cried, as if he were a spectator at a fight.
Uncle Bachelard was, in fact, getting the worst of it. When, after the vegetables—French beans swimming in water—Adèle brought in a vanilla-and-currant ice, there was great rejoicing round the table; and the young ladies took advantage of the situation to make their uncle drink half the bottle of champagne which Madame Josserand had bought at a grocer’s round the corner for three francs. He was getting maudlin, and forgot to keep up the farce of appearing imbecilic.
‘Eh? twenty francs! Why twenty francs? Oh, I see! You want me to give you twenty francs? But I haven’t got them, really I haven’t! Ask Gueulin. Didn’t I come away without my wallet, Gueulin, and you had to pay at the café? If I’d got them, my darlings, I’d give them to you for being so sweet!’
Gueulin, in his detached way, was laughing like an ill-greased cartwheel.
‘Oh, the old humbug!’ he muttered.
Then, suddenly getting carried away, he cried:
‘Search him!’
Then, losing all restraint, Hortense and Berthe threw themselves upon their uncle once more. Checked at first by their good breeding, this desire for the twenty francs suddenly got the better of them, and all pretence was now abandoned. The one, with both hands, searched his waistcoat pockets, while the other thrust her fist into the pockets of his frock-coat. Bachelard, however, pinned back in his chair, continued to struggle, but laughter broken by drunken hiccups overcame him.
‘I swear, I ’aven’t got a penny. Leave off, you’re tickling me!’
‘Look in his trousers!’ cried Gueulin, excited by the whole spectacle.
Berthe determinedly thrust her hand into one of his trouser pockets. They were trembling with excitement as they grew rougher and rougher, and they could almost have slapped their uncle’s face. Suddenly Berthe uttered a cry of victory; from the depths of his pocket she drew forth a handful of money, which she scattered on a plate, and there, among the copper and silver, was a gold twenty-franc piece.
‘I’ve got it!’ she cried, as, with flushed cheeks, and her hair in disorder, she tossed the coin in the air and caught it again.
All the guests clapped their hands; they thought it terribly funny. There was a hum of excitement, and it was the success of the dinner. Madame Josserand smiled tenderly at her dear daughters. Bachelard, picking up his money, remarked sententiously that if they wanted twenty francs they had to earn them. And the two girls, exhausted but content, sat panting on either side of him, their lips still quivering with the excitement of the fray.
A bell rang. They had been at table for a long time, and guests were now beginning to arrive. Monsieur Josserand, who had decided to laugh, like his wife, at what had occurred, would have liked them to sing a little Béranger,* but she silenced him; that sort of entertainment was too much for her poetic taste. She hurried on the dessert, the more so because Bachelard, annoyed at having to give away the twenty francs, was becoming quarrelsome, complaining that Léon, his nephew, had not even bothered to wish him many happy returns. Léon had only been invited to the soirée. Then, as they rose from table, Adèle said that the architect from downstairs and a young gentleman were in the drawing-room.
‘Ah, yes! that young man,’ whispered Madame Juzeur, as she took Monsieur Josserand’s arm. ‘So you invited him? I saw him earlier talking to the concierge. He’s very nice-looking.’
Madame Josserand took Trublot’s arm, and then Saturnin, left alone at table, and whom all the fuss about the twenty francs had not roused from his torpor, upset his chair in a sudden paroxysm of fury, shouting:
‘I won’t have it, by God! I won’t!’
This was just what his mother always dreaded. She motioned to Monsieur Josserand to go on with Madame Juzeur, while she disengaged her arm from that of Trublot, who understood the situation and disappeared; but he must have made a mistake, for he slipped off towards the kitchen in the wake of Adèle. Bachelard and Gueulin, ignoring the ‘maniac’, as they called him, stood chuckling and nudging each other in a corner.
‘He was very strange all evening; I was afraid something like this might happen,’ muttered Madame Josserand, in a state of high anxiety. ‘Berthe, quick, quick!’
But Berthe was showing the twenty-franc piece to Hortense. Saturnin had grabbed a knife, and kept repeating: ‘My God! I won’t have it! I’ll rip them open!’
‘Berthe!’ shrieked Madame Josserand, in despair.
As the girl came rushing up, she only just had time to prevent her brother from going into the drawing-room, knife in hand. She shook him angrily, while he, with his madman’s logic, tried to explain.
‘Don’t try to stop me; they deserve it … It’s for the best … I’m sick of their awful ways. They just want to sell us.’
‘Nonsense!’ cried Berthe. ‘What’s the matter with you? What are you shouting about?’
Confused and trembling with fury, he stared at her and stammered out:
‘They’re trying to get you married. But they never will! I won’t let them hurt you!’
His sister could not help laughing. Where had he got the idea that they were going to marry her? He nodded his head, declaring that he knew it, that he was sure of it. When his mother tried to soothe him he gripped the knife so firmly that she shrank back, appalled. It alarmed her to think that they had been overheard, and she hurriedly told Berthe to take Saturnin away and lock him in his room, while he, however, kept raising his voice as he became more and more excited.
‘I won’t let them marry you. I won’t let them hurt you. If they do, I’ll rip them open!’
Then Berthe put her hands on his shoulders and looked him straight in the face.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘be quiet, or I won’t love you any more.’
He staggered back; his face took on a gentler, despairing look, and his eyes filled with tears.
‘You won’t love me any more? You won’t love me any more? Don’t say that! Oh, please say you’ll still love me; say you’ll always love me, and never love anybody else!’
She caught him by the wrist and led him out, docile as a child.
In the drawing-room Madame Josserand, with exaggerated cordiality, greeted Campardon as her dear neighbour. Why hadn’t Madame Campardon given her the great pleasure of her company? When the architect replied that his wife was still rather poorly, she became even more gushing, and declared that she would have been delighted to receive her in a dressing-gown and slippers. But her smile was directed at Octave, who was talking to Monsieur Josserand; all her gushing amiability was intended to reach him over Campardon’s shoulder. When her husband introduced the young man to her, she was so effusive that Octave became quite embarrassed.
Other guests were arriving—stout mothers with skinny daughters; fathers and uncles only just roused from their day of somnolence at the office, driving before them their flocks of marriageable daughters. Two lamps, covered with pink paper shades, threw a subdued light over the room, hiding the shabby yellow velvet of the furniture, the dingy piano, and the three dirty prints of Swiss scenery, which formed black patches against the bare, chilly panels of white and gold. This niggardly brilliance served to cloak the guests’ shortcomings, veiling their worn faces and their crude attempts at finery. Madame Josserand wore her flame-coloured gown of the previous evening; but, in order to put people off the scent, she had spent the whole day sewing new sleeves on to the bodice and embellishing it with a lace cape to hide her shoulders, while her daughters sat beside her in their greasy dressing-
gowns, stitching away ferociously, putting new trimmings on their only gowns, which ever since the previous winter they had been patching up and altering in this way.
Each time the bell rang there was a sound of whispering in the anteroom. In the gloomy drawing-room people talked in an undertone, while every now and then the forced laugh of some young lady struck a discordant note. Behind little Madame Juzeur, Bachelard and Gueulin kept nudging each other and making smutty remarks; Madame Josserand anxiously watched them, afraid, as ever, that her brother might misbehave. Madame Juzeur could hear everything they said, her lips trembling as she smiled angelically at all the naughty anecdotes. Uncle Bachelard had the reputation of having an eye for the ladies. His nephew, on the other hand, was chaste. However tempting the opportunity, Gueulin refused women’s favours on principle; not because he despised them, but because he was fearful as to the consequences of such bliss. ‘There’s always some bother,’ he would say.
At last Berthe reappeared, and went hurriedly up to her mother.
‘Well, that wasn’t easy,’ she whispered. ‘He wouldn’t go to bed. I double-locked the door, but I’m afraid he’ll break everything in his room.’
Madame Josserand tugged violently at her daughter’s dress. Octave, close by, had turned his head.
‘My daughter Berthe, Monsieur Mouret,’ she said, in her most gracious manner, as she introduced her to him. ‘Monsieur Octave Mouret, my dear.’
She gave her daughter a look. The latter well knew the significance of that look—it was a call, as it were, to arms, and it reminded her of the lessons of the previous night. She obeyed immediately, with the complacent indifference of a girl who no longer cares to stop and examine a potential suitor. She recited her part quite prettily, with the easy grace of a Parisienne already a little weary of the world, but completely at home with all subjects, speaking enthusiastically of the South, where she had never been. Octave, used to the stiffness of provincial virgins, was quite charmed by all this friendly chatter.
Just then Trublot, who had not been seen since dinner, furtively slipped in from the dining-room, and Berthe, noticing him, asked thoughtlessly where he had been. He did not answer, which embarrassed her somewhat, and to get out of her awkward position she introduced the two young men to each other. Her mother, meanwhile, had not taken her eyes off her, assuming the attitude of a commander-in-chief, and directing the campaign from her armchair. When satisfied that the first engagement had been successful, she recalled her daughter with a sign, and whispered:
‘Wait until the Vabres are here before you play. And make sure you play loud enough.’
Octave, left alone with Trublot, began to question him.
‘Charming, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, not bad.’
‘The young lady in blue is her elder sister, isn’t she? She isn’t as pretty.’
‘No, she certainly isn’t. She’s much thinner.’
Trublot, who was short-sighted, could not see her clearly. He had come back very contented, chewing little black things, which Octave, to his surprise, perceived to be coffee-beans.
‘Tell me,’ he asked bluntly, ‘in the South the women are plump, aren’t they?’
Octave smiled, and immediately he and Trublot were on the best of terms. They had many ideas in common. They sat down on a sofa in the corner and proceeded to exchange confidences. The one talked of his employer at the Ladies’ Paradise—Madame Hédouin, a damned fine woman, but too frigid; the other said that he was employed as correspondent from nine to five at Monsieur Desmarquay’s, the money-changer’s, where there was a stunning maidservant. Just then the drawing-room door opened, and three people came in.
‘Those are the Vabres,’ whispered Trublot, leaning over to his new friend. ‘Auguste, the tall one, with the face like a sick sheep, is the landlord’s eldest son. He’s thirty-three, and suffers from continual migraine, which affects his eyesight and at one time prevented him from learning Latin. He’s very bad-tempered, and has gone into business. The other, Théophile, that weedy fellow with sandy hair and a straggly beard, that little old man of twenty-eight, forever coughing and wracked by toothache, tried all sorts of trades, and then married the young woman in front of him, Madame Valérie.’
‘I’ve seen her before,’ interrupted Octave. ‘She’s the daughter of a local haberdasher, isn’t she? But how deceptive those little veils are. I thought she was pretty, but she’s just striking-looking, with that dried-up, leaden complexion.’
‘Yes, she’s another one who isn’t my type at all,’ replied Trublot sententiously. ‘She’s got wonderful eyes; that’s enough for some men. But she’s as thin as a rake!’
Madame Josserand had risen to shake hands with Valérie.
‘What?’ she cried. ‘Monsieur Vabre hasn’t come with you? And Monsieur and Madame Duveyrier haven’t done us the honour of coming either, although they promised they would. It really isn’t fair of them!’
The young woman made excuses for her father-in-law on account of his age, though he really preferred to stay at home and work in the evening. As for her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, they had asked her to give their apologies, as they had been invited to an official reception they were obliged to attend. Madame Josserand bit her lips. She had never missed one of the Saturdays of those stuck-up people on the first floor, who thought it beneath them to come up to the fourth floor for her Tuesdays. No doubt her modest tea-parties weren’t the same as their grand orchestral concerts. But when her daughters were both married, and she had got two sons-in-law and their relatives to fill her drawing-room, she would have choral entertainments too.
‘Get ready,’ she whispered in Berthe’s ear.
There were about thirty guests, packed in rather tightly as they had not thrown open the little drawing-room, which was being used as a cloakroom for the ladies. The newcomers shook hands all round. Valérie sat next to Madame Juzeur, while Bachelard and Gueulin made fond remarks about Théophile Vabre, whom they thought it funny to describe as ‘useless’. Monsieur Josserand, invisible in his own drawing-room, blotted out as completely as if he were a guest for whom everyone was looking, although he stood right in front of them, was listening in horror to a story told by one of his old friends: Bonnaud—he knew Bonnaud, didn’t he?—the chief accountant of the Northern Railways, whose daughter had got married last spring? Well, Bonnaud, it seemed, had just discovered that his son-in-law, to all appearances a most respectable person, had once been a clown, and for ten years had been kept by a female circus-rider!
‘Ssh, ssh!’ murmured several obliging voices. Berthe had opened the piano.
‘Oh,’ explained Madame Josserand, ‘it’s an unpretentious little piece—a simple reverie. I’m sure you like music, Monsieur Mouret. Come closer to the piano. My daughter plays this rather well—just an amateur, you know; but she plays with feeling, a great deal of feeling.’
‘Watch out!’ said Trublot, under his breath. ‘That’s the sonata trick.’
Octave was obliged to go and stand near the piano. To see the attentions which Madame Josserand showered upon him, one would have thought that she was making Berthe play solely for him.
‘“The Banks of the Oise”,’ she went on. ‘It’s really very pretty. Now, my love, begin; and don’t be nervous. I’m sure Monsieur Octave will make allowances.’
The girl attacked the piece without the least sign of nervousness; but her mother never took her eyes off her, with the air of a sergeant ready to punish with a slap the least technical blunder. What mortified her was that the instrument, cracked and wheezy after fifteen years of daily scale-playing, did not have the sonorous quality of tone possessed by the Duveyriers’ grand piano. Moreover, she felt that her daughter never played loud enough.
After the tenth bar Octave, looking quite enraptured, and keeping time with his head to the more flamboyant passages, no longer listened. He watched the audience, noting the polite efforts on the part of the men to pay attention, and the affected delight
of the women. He examined them now that they were left to themselves, and saw how their daily cares were once more reflected in their tired faces. The mothers were visibly dreaming of marrying their daughters, as they stood there with open mouths and ferocious teeth, unconsciously letting themselves go. It was the strange madness that pervaded this drawing-room—a ravenous appetite for sons-in-law—that consumed these bourgeois women as they listened to the asthmatic sounds of the piano. The girls, quite exhausted, were dozing off; their heads drooped, and they forgot to hold themselves upright. Octave, who despised innocent young ladies, was more interested in Valérie. Plain she certainly was, in that extraordinary yellow silk dress, trimmed with black satin; but he found her attractive, his gaze kept returning uneasily to her, while she, unnerved by the shrill music, had a vague look in her eyes, and wore a sickly, neurotic smile.
At this moment a catastrophe occurred. The bell rang, and a gentleman entered the room without paying the slightest attention to the music.
‘Oh, doctor!’ said Madame Josserand in annoyance.
Doctor Juillerat made a gesture of apology, and stood stock-still. At this moment Berthe dwelt lingeringly on a certain tender phrase, which her listeners greeted with murmurs of approval. ‘Charming!’ ‘Delightful!’ Madame Juzeur seemed to be swooning, as if someone were tickling her. Hortense stood beside her sister, turning over the pages, oblivious to the surging torrent of notes, straining her ear to catch the sound of the doorbell; and when the doctor came in, her gesture of disappointment was so marked that she tore one of the pages. Then suddenly the piano trembled beneath Berthe’s frail fingers, which beat upon it like hammers. The dream had come to an end in a deafening crash of furious harmonies.
There was a moment’s hesitation. The audience began to wake up. Had it finished? Then came a shower of compliments. ‘Absolutely lovely!’ ‘What talent!’
‘Mademoiselle is a really wonderful musician,’ said Octave, interrupted in his observations. ‘No one has ever given me such pleasure.’
